- Hey guys, it's Justine
and today you are watching a virtual reality video,
so you can look around, you can look up, you can look down,
as we explore NASA's jet propulsion lab,
and I'm so excited because I've wanted
to visit this place for so long.
This is where they build the robots
they send up into the solar system,
and we're gonna be checking out first
the mission control where they gather
and they kind of make sense of all of that information
that those robots in the world are sending down to us,
so let's go take a look.
Don't forget guys, this is virtual reality, look around,
have a peek, see what you can see,
you never know what you might see.
You can see a lot of stuff actually.
(soft techno music)
Hi Tracie - Hey there
- Thanks so much for joining us today.
- Absolutely - So what exactly
do you do here, what is your full title?
- I am the Juno Deputy Chief Engineer,
and what that job means right now that we're in Ops
is that when things go wrong with the spacecraft
I help work with the team to figure out how to resolve it.
- We're here in Mission Control,
so can you take us on a little quick tour
of what happens here? - Yeah, absolutely
So this room, you can kind of think of it
as the center of the universe cuz this is the place
where all the spacecraft
that are out past the orbit of the moon
that are using the Deep Space Network
to send their data back.
Their data comes to those networks
that's at Madrid, Goldstone, Canberra,
it all comes through this room
where people like the Data Controller, the Operations Chief,
make sure there's nothing wrong with that data flow
and it's getting out to the operators of the mission
and the science teams so they can do
everything they need to do.
- So you've been working on Juno,
and you're still currently on that project
so what's that kinda been like for you
from start to not-quite finished
but to currently where it is now?
- It's been pretty amazing.
I joined the Juno team in 2009,
about two years before launch,
getting through all the things we needed to do
to prepare the spacecraft to go on this long journey
and get to Jupiter and do its job.
It launched in August 2011.
It took a five year cruise to get out there.
We had plenty of things to do,
plenty of things that went right and plenty of things
that went not-so-right for us to deal with
and then we arrived on July 4, 2016.
(clapping)
- [Announcer] (mumbles) we have the tone for burn cut-off
on Delta B, (mumbles) home Juno, welcome to Jupiter.
- So, you know, not only Juno's going on,
but you clearly have tons of other things,
so what else can we look forward to
from you guys in the coming years?
- Yeah, we have a few really major missions
that are in the works right now.
There is the Mars 2020,
which is the next rover going to Mars.
Curiosity is still there and working,
one of our NBR rovers is still working,
but we're looking to put a new suite of instruments
and go explore a new spot on Mars with that mission in 2020.
There's also the Europa Mission which is really awesome
because it's going there expressly
to study the moon of Jupiter which they think
has liquid water under a shell of ice.
One of the more, in my opinion,
I'm not a scientist, did I mention that?
(both laugh)
One of the possibly more likely places
for there to be life in our solar system.
- It's so exciting to see everything
that you guys are doing,
so congratulations on the amazing mission
and on all of your future missions.
- Thank you, I appreciate that.
Thanks for coming to see us - Thank you
There's one thing that I've noticed here
is that they have peanuts everywhere.
I mean there even right here on this cardboard cut out,
and actually - Peanuts?
- Hi - Hey
- Wait a minute, this is crazy.
How are you?
- I'm good, how are you?
Thanks for joining us here.
- Both of me.
- So one of the things that I've noticed,
what's up with this, is there a story?
- It's actually a tradition here at JPL,
so in the 1960s we were sending
the first robotic spacecraft to the moon.
We were trying to understand what the moon would look like
at the scale humans were gonna land,
so we had to kinda figure out the terrain,
so we sent these space rovers,
they were basically missiles with a camera on them.
They were meant to crash into the moon
but just take pictures until the very last moment.
Here's the problem, one through six all failed.
They blew up rockets, they missed the moon entirely,
we had cameras that didn't work, so kind of a problem.
Ranger Seven though, the seventh mission in this trend
finally worked, and they looked around the room,
and they were trying to figure out
what was different between Ranger Seven
and the previous six, and they saw peanuts were in the room,
so since then we've actually had peanuts
at all of our major events, Curiosity launch and landing,
Juno's Jupiter orbit, all these times
we have peanuts in the room.
We like to say it's a tradition, not superstition.
- Yes, of course - But, you know
- I'm not gonna complain cuz there's free snacks everywhere.
Well, thanks, this is great.
Do you have a couple of these at your house or
- No, but you know, this'd be great in my office
to pretend that I'm working when I'm just taking a nap.
- Thank you guys so much for watching,
and a huge thank you to JPL for letting me take
this amazing tour and bring you guys
along with me for the ride.
I will see you guys later.
Hope you guys enjoyed the video,
make sure you go back and watch again,
cuz you never know what you might miss with VR.
(light techno music)